Summary:Audience surveys find that ‘It’s not for me’ is the most common reason given for not engaging with art. Many movements in modern art, especially the Utopian ones, argue that art is for everyone. Meanwhile, museums striving for a mass audience are accused of being populist. How are artists today addressing these contradictions? This presentation will explore the different strategies and media that artists have used in the quest for ‘Art for all.’ It will examine familiar strategies (such as multiples and mail art) as well as more recent media (such as street art and Instagram). And it asks whether a ‘third way’ between populism and elitism can be discovered.

Artists, art groups and supporters of MMCA welcome.Followed by a pot luck shared meal.Cost : Something for the 'pot luck'

Andrew McLeod is a well known New Zealand artist specializing in painting.In this talk he will give his general view of the national visual culture scene as he sees it, and also speak on his response to some of the works in the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award Exhibition.Cost – Free

A winner of the Molly Morpeth Canaday award in 2017, Kirstin Carlin will talk about what she has been working on since. She will cover her series of work Pleasure Garden which featured in Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and Through the Trees, an exhibition of paintings alongside the work of Frances Hodgkins at the Dunedin Art gallery. Cost – Free